In The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe, I elected to retain the name Askeladden as the hero of “every other one of our folktales,” after considerable deliberation. Previous English translations have called him “Cinderellus” (Chambers), “Boots” (Dasent), “Ashpattle” (Brækstad), or “the Ash Lad” (Nunnally, among others). In the Norwegian first edition of the first volume of the folktales, the collectors standardised his name as Askepot (subsequently used in Norwegian for the character known in English as Cinderella), but as Jørgen Moe mentions, this is a purely Danish term, known but little used in Norway, which the collectors employed in deference to the “common aversion to Norwegian names” in writing.

The various Norwegian collectors heard the most common protagonist called a number of bynames: Askefi(i)s, Askepot, Askeladd, Oskelad(d), and Oskelabb. In each case, the word used is a compound of two roots. The first of these is common to all the names: aske-/ oske- means “ash(es).” Each name takes a second root, either -fi(i)s, which denotes blowing or farting (explaining why Asbjørnsen and Moe demurred from using “Askefis” as the hero’s name), or -lad(d)/ -labb/ -pot, any of which indicates something to to with the feet.¹ Tyrihans is another name that Jørgen Moe mentions, “which means Hans who concerns himself with the fatwood” (used to light fires or as lanterns). The semantic domain is the same; whether he is called Askeladden or Tyrihans, he hangs about the hearth, playing with the fire instead of pulling his weight on the farm.

A number of ideas concerning the significance of the Askeladden character have been suggested over the years. Due to his status as the family’s underdog, who, despite the contempt of the rest of the family, and thanks to his tenacity, quick-wittedness, and heart, emerges victorious at the end of the folktale, Norwegians were quick to embrace the figure as an embodiment of the national spirit. This view ignores the inconvenient fact that Norway won its independence, not by exercising the qualities we see in the Askeladden figure, but as an unintended side effect of European Realpolitik in the wake of the Napoleonic wars.

Other ideas include the notion of Askeladden as a parallel to heroic figures from the Old Norse sagas.² The descriptions of some of the heroes of the sagas are quite similar to those of Askeladden of the folktales. Such descriptions are not seen in heroic poems, where the heroic figure is rather nurtured as such. Knut Liestøl assumes therefore that Askeladden of the folktales was used for a literary model in the sagas. This would give a very early date for the figure of Askeladden, however, and the development may well have been in the opposite direction – Askeladden developing from the sagas, rather than the sagas coming from the folktales. In either case, it does not explain the name.

Because Askeladden has been so highly regarded throughout the years, Norwegians have lost sight of the inconvenient fact that the byname is an insult. Well, it was at one time.

Regine Normann, in her two-volume collection of legends, demonstrates nicely how, as late as the 1920s, playing in the hearth was considered an oddity, associated with indolence. The byname was a taunt:

Our eldest brother died of a throat infection when he was nine years old. Father was so afraid that things would go the same way with Mekkel and with me that we were barely allowed beneath the open sky in the mildest of bad weather. Do you remember, Mekkel, how excited we were when we once in a while got to go out and play with the other children, and how they made fun of us and called us stoveblowers? And it didn’t help to ask to be allowed to wear less; our parents were unwavering.

– Regine Normann. “The Mislaid Breadknife” in Legends from Arctic Norway (my emphasis).

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Previously: Today You Learned (#1): Not all Asbjørnsen & Moe is Asbjørnsen & Moe.

Having published The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe, I decided to take a look at the state of the folktales and legends of Norway’s closest neighbour. Despite Sweden being so close, we seldom hear of their folklore, for unlike Norway, Sweden never produced anyone with a vision like that of Asbjørnsen and Moe. Consequently, there is no single edition of folktales and legends that is widely understood to be Sweden’s national collection. Even so, various collectors have recorded traditions from across Sweden, beginning in the early half of the nineteenth century. I know of 43 volumes of these folktales; I own many of them.

The absence of a national collection of folktales is on the one hand regrettable, for Swedes do not rally around any particular book as representative of their identity (although they never were never deprived of their national identity, unlike the Norwegians), but on the other hand, it gives a publisher or translator like me the freedom to collate novel collections from across the entire archive of folktales. Which is, in the fullness of time, what I have a mind to do. In fact, why not several shorter collections?

Several collections of Swedish folktales have been published in English translation. The earliest of these is Benjamin Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories, which anthologises the folktales recorded by Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius and George Stephens (published in the original in 1849) with folktales from Norway, Denmark, and northern Germany. Among other compendiums we find Herman Hofberg’s Swedish Fairy Tales (1890), translated by W. H. Myers, which consists largely of local legends, arranged by region of origin, rather than folktales in the strict sense; Hans Lien Brækstad’s translation of some of Nils Gabriel Djurklou’s folktales, in Fairy Tales from the Swedish (1901); Helena Nyblom’s Jolly Calle and Other Swedish Fairy Tales (1912); and The Swedish Fairy Book (1921) by Clara Stroebe and Frederick H. Martens.

Unlike my edition of Asbjørnsen & Moe, which produced something new – the first complete English translation of these celebrated tales and legends – any edition of Swedish tales that I decide to produce will merely add to the number of relatively informal collections published so far. My feeling is that such a publication does a disservice to the tradition bearers (whose work deserves better treatment than to be thrown into a melting pot of “Swedish folktales”), the collectors (ditto), and the folk narratives themselves (the result of a long succession of people learning and transmitting these stories). If I am going to publish a collection of Swedish folktales, I want to do it in a way that I find worthy of the traditions; I’m not interested in turning a quick buck.

Just how I intend to achieve this aim is as yet unknown. The idea is maturing within my thoughts. More to follow, no doubt.

The end of the year is often a time of reflection, so I thought I would take some space here to sum up the last twelve months or so. 2025 has been a year different from the last few years; I haven't had all the work on the Asbjørnsen & Moe collections to do. I began the year quite slowly, then, focussing on my well-being more than getting anything done. Eight years of relentless translation, writing, and editorial work (which came to an end in September 2024), on top of a fulltime job, took me several months to recover from.

During this time, I realised that my reading had more or less stalled. Of course, I have read volumes (for the purpose of writing), but by the end of last year, my personal reading for pleasure had dwindled to little more than one book a month. This is no way to live! Digging deep into my soul, I realised that my sluggishness had its root in publicly tracking my reading on Goodreads. Apparently I am put together in a way that rebels at anything that whiffs of obligation or competition, hence the depressed mood. I closed my Goodreads account, et voilà! My reading has increased to a level I now find acceptable. I still log what I read – what I have read, when I began and finished, as well as what I thought of the book – but these records are for my eyes only.

As spring sprang, I felt rested enough to get back into publishing something. My translation of Regine Normann’s Legends from Arctic Norway had been completed in tandem with the production of Asbjørnsen & Moe, but it needed editing and compiling. This I did, and made it available at the beginning of June. An ebook followed at the end of the summer.

Then I had the idea of creating a compendium of brief texts as an advent calendar. The folklore had already been translated, so again, all it needed was editing and compiling, which I did. Christmas in Norway, 2025 is still available, and still as entertaining after advent.

In ancient news, my volume of Erotic Folktales from Norway has this year sold its thousandth copy (it’s taken eight years, but even so…), which makes it my best selling book, which has given me the greatest return, and which has subsidised all the other books. If I have lost money overall, it’s not much – thanks to this book.

The coming year

My plans for the coming year consist of publishing more folktales and legends, and writing articles. Articles on the block include an introduction to three early Norwegian women writers of fairy tales, an essay on (and translation of) the only bisexual/ polyamorous folktale I have come across, and a discussion and translation of a folktale rumoured to be a source of “The Story of the Three Bears,” Robert Southey’s famous fairy tale from 1837.

Bookwise, I have a volume of draug (revenants of the sea dead) legends largely finished, which is in want of brief explanatory introductions to the unfamiliar authors and texts, and then editing. This one has been a long time coming, ever displaced by other projects. But no more!

After that, I have these volumes in the works:

• A volume of forgotten folktales that are in some manner connected to Asbjørnsen & Moe.

• A volume of legends and hulder tales by Astrid and Olaf Thalberg:

Old Jon Berget knew a thing or two; he could make twisted limbs whole again, or recite some words over sick livestock to make it recover. Folk said he owned a black book.

• A second advent calendar. It probably won’t recoup my investment, but it’s my money, and I enjoy putting it out there,

But whatever the coming year throws our way, I hope it is an improvement on 2025, and I hope that yours is a happy new year!

Buy the new ebook. Released today. Unrestricted ePub or Kindle – your choice.

Details and links here..

Since the release of The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe, a year ago this month, I have been quietly correcting errors as I have become aware of them. Most of them are typos, some a misspelled word or the odd Norwegian spelling that has escaped the editing process, etc. Some have been of a more comprehensive nature; my first correction, for example, was a compilation error that resulted in the omission of the table of contents from one of the volumes. But now I am closing this chapter. Any errors that remain (and in a book of more than 2000 pages, overseen only by the author and one editor, there will be some) will just have to stay there.

My decision was prompted by my recent discovery of the collector and informant for the published version of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” which I found deep in Asbjørnsen’ and Moe’s correspondance (see header image). My immediate impulse was to add the information to the existing edition, but I realised that doing so would disturb pagination, rendering the book unreliable as a source for others to cite. Consequently, I have begun collating additional information for a future second edition of my work. How long it will be before I have a critical mass of new notes, I cannot say; after all, it was nearly a year before I uncovered the names of the previously obscure collector and informant of a single folktale.

Watch this space, I guess.